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“Yeah, I’m...Rory Sullivan.”

“No shit,” he said, his brows lifting. “Rory Sullivan.Rory Sullivan.Mike Heater. We went to high school together.”

“Oh,” she said.

Mike. Mike who had photocopied her diary,Mike.

That Mike.

Her bully was, in fact, in residence.

“Do I look that different?” he asked, grinning.

Well, yes, because he was looking at her, and he was smiling. Which was a weird experience.

She should be thrilled with that, she supposed. This was the point of what she was doing. She wanted people to see her differently. She wanted attention.

He was looking at her like she was beautiful, and her only experience of that before this one had been with Gideon just recently. But it felt so different to have Gideon look at her. It had felt warm and exciting. Wonderful.

This was...satisfying in a way but also made her feel a little bit edgy. Not in a fun way.

It didn’t matter, though. She’d never thought she was going to build lasting connections. She wanted to be a legend. It was different.

“Youlook amazing,” said Mike, not waiting for her to answer his question.

“So do you,” she said, doing her best to use that same casual tone.

“I’m in real estate now,” he said.

Well, she hadn’t expected that.

“Oh. That’s interesting.”

She wasn’t interested. She didn’t need to be. She needed him to be interested, and he was. How big of a triumph was it? Rory Sullivan chatting it up with Mike Heater.

He was interested in her. He’d approached her. It made her feel...powerful in some way.

“Listen, if you’d like to go get some dinner sometime...”

“I’d love to,” she said, forgetting everything in that rush of actually getting asked out on a date. “Oh. I’m moving. At the end of the month.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “A casual dinner is even better.”

Maybe that meant sex. Maybe.

She didn’t know what she thought about that. It felt weird. This object of pain being the one she could potentially...

She needed to think more about what she wanted out of sex. In her mind now, it was much more than about doing something to prove she could.

She thought of what it had felt like to dance with Gideon. And she couldn’t help but stare at him. At his strong profile. The broad set of his shoulders.

Dancing with him wasn’t about proving anything.

It was the heat of his touch, the solid muscular body beneath her hands. Being close to him. Breathing his air.

“Yeah,” she said, dragging her gaze away from Gideon. Because he was still chatting up those women, and so why shouldn’t she do this? She should. It was the point of them going out, after all. It had been the point the whole time.

“Great. Can I get your number?”